MapQuest's Lake Ontario Stance Is Paying Off

MapQuest isn't budging on the names of the Great Lakes, and users are rewarding it. The mapping service says downloads have exploded after it refused to relabel Lake Ontario as "Lake America" in its maps following President Trump's Aug. 27 order to the Department of the Interior that the name be changed. The company's app is currently the No. 1 downloaded free iPhone app in the US, per Apple. TechCrunch cites third-party data showing there were 162,000 overall US downloads of the app in the week starting Aug. 24; that's a more than 10x week-over-week increase.

Google Maps on Saturday said its policy is to display the names provided by the Geographic Names Information System to US visitors; as such, American users now see Lake America, while Canadians still see Lake Ontario. The AP reports Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday that Trump reached out directly to Apple to ask it to change the label on its maps; at the time of this writing, Apple continued to display Lake Ontario as the name.